everywhere i go
by lges
Summary: They grow up and grow up like trees do. They dig their nutriments and values and resources out this godly soil. They are two vigorous trees but theirs branches never touch. They have no time, they have to reach the sky. :: :: dramione, camp half-blood!au


_pairing: DracoHermione  
setting: camp half-blood au  
wc: 4435  
notes: written for an anon on tumblr. Hope you will like it._

* * *

Draco Malfoy is the son of a stranger with great power. He is the son of justice, of balance and of revenge.

Since he's a baby, he's thirsty with belonging somewhere, with earning a place, _his place._

A place somewhere else than in his manor on Cobble Hill with his mom, blond and rich and craving for satin dresses and hearing her own name again and again.

Hermione Granger is the daughter of Athena (she knows it. She's intelligent and restless and wise and determinate and –

Most of the time, she is just lonely but she doesn't tell.)

The rest is history, you will tell but if we must be honest, we'll tell that all there's left is ruins and embers.

 **i. I'm still alone in my mind**

Hermione Granger is so proud of her dad. He's an eminent dentist and he is so wise that she can barely compete with him but she tries because it's what she does, it's who she is. She hits a brick wall on a good challenge, on a hard enigma. No one looks at the bruises, no one looks at the scratches that it left.

But everyone keeps their gazes on her big tooth and her fuzzy hair, on her big brain.

 _She's a brainy_ , they tell. They don't ever bother to whisper. _Oh yes_ , she thinks.

She hugs her dad, every night before climbing to bed, she thanks him for the pile of bed on her nightstand even if she has some difficulties to focus. Doctors have said it's ADHD, nothing she cannot deal with, right? Nothing she cannot overcome?

 _Oh yes, but I am so much more._

She's the daughter of a giant (her father is tall. Like very tall.) and of a goddess (she has looked for her in books at the public library.). Her father has told her when she was something like six years old. She was not scared, she was not sad, not even when it was Mother's Day and that she was left with a card and no one to whom give it.

She was resilient and the blood in her veins was red and gold. Older, she learnt to curse cautiously: she was a fucking miracle

Now she's just lost with visions at night and monsters tracking her smell and her legacy at day.

"What can I do?" asks her dad, after work hours. He keeps his glasses on his nose and he takes off his surgical gloves. They are green and the surgery's lights make him looks so pale, so thin.

She's brave for the both of them. If she could, she would erase his memory makes him leave monsters and the United States and the memories of a goddess met under the shape of a pretty patient with grey eyes and a collection of pencil skirts.

But it's not one of her talent. She thinks to ask her mom, briefly, but she's not a girl who asks, who begs. She is independent and she doesn't need to rely on others.

She cannot erase his memory but she's very good at running. So, she runs, a backpack full with books and toothpaste, a brush, clothes and a kitchen knife.

She doesn't know where but she will figure it out. She doesn't know when but she will find out that she cannot keep up with 3 monsters attacks a day longer.

 **ii. where they don't know my name**

For Draco, it's easier. He is born with a mother and a manor. He is born with warm embrace and material safety. There is a fire burning in his chest and a bitter taste in his mouth but he ignores it.

One day, a guy comes and rings at the door. His name is Gregory Goyle and he takes more after a billy goat than after a boy with such bad manner. He has a strange twitch in his knee. Disturbing.

Disturbing is not even an adequate word when he announces to Draco that he must take him to the camp Half-Blood because he is some kind of Greek demigod. This boy, in the end, is no longer a boy but a satyr.

For Draco, it's easier. He is born with a mother and a manor. His mother has lied to him about his dad, saying he was a criminal spending his life in jail for corruption and misappropriation of funds. That there was no love story but a _wrong place wrong time_ hookup story. His whole freaking life.

Acid burns his stomach. His father is a god (her mother explains him that she needed to keep it secret for him, for his protection. The monsters smell knowledge and power. She doesn't explicit which one but he has a gut and a fire burning inside of him. The god is hurt, he is fire and revenge.), he watches for the balance on earth but there is no balance when he has spent his whole childhood hidden behind walls of lies and marble ju st to keep away the monsters.

(His mother is the worst of them, he thinks. She cries. He leaves. She has packed up for him, sweets and chocolate. A photography in glossy paper.)

On the way, Greg becomes his first friend, his first ally. He's all crooked smile and big hugs. He has none of the sharp angles that shape Draco, and it's okay.

There is different way to survive. For some of them, it's kindness.

It doesn't stop the burning in his stomach or the pression in his eyes holding up the tears, it doesn't decrease the anger, the rage, the appetite for revenge on a ghost life, aching and twisting his fists and his back. But until they will be on the top of the hill, it will be enough.

They don't know his name yet, but they will learn.

He looks at all these people who don't know his name or his burden. There is a chief (there is always one) except this one is called Remus, has a tired face and brown chocolate hair stripped with gray.

He has a firm but kind voice. He talks about schedule and integration, he talks about friends and about heroes but Draco Malfoy is not used to this kind of qualifying (he's a coward, he's a lone wolf, he's a villain.)

He has never been keen of authority except the one of his mother (when she had power and love.)

So, he keeps his mouth shut and his mind blank. He follows his new chief to Hermes's cabin where are the lost and the wanderer.

There is a lot of people in there. Small. Nervous. A boy with black hair, messy like if he had been in a thunderstorm, green eyes and a nerdy pair of glasses. It's not his kind of ally. He has a weak smile but a weaker bone structure.

There is a black guy. Same age. The smile of a prince, the charisma of a young god and eyes dark like death. They shake hands.

"My name's Blaise. Blaise Zabini."

"Malfoy. Draco Malfoy."

"What can I do for you, Malfoy?"

"Introduce me to the good kind."

Draco Malfoy doesn't know how to make friends yet but he knows how do business partner and deals.

They leave the overcrowded bungalow (with his old brown chipped of paint and his too many campers and hammock and laughs and sounds and – it's more that he can bear.) in direction of the strawberry fields.

Closing the door behind him, he notices a girl. Her skin is lighter than Blaise's but her eyes are just as intense. There is a strong and powerful curiosity in her gaze. He shuts the door before she could read on his face.

"Who is she?" he asks to his partner with his usual poker face and a whisper swallowed by the wind.

"This girl? Her name is Hermione Granger. She's here since a month or two, I think. She was here before me. Unclaimed like us. There's rumors about her. They say that she ran away from home, fought more monsters than most of us to come here. She's not really a confident one, not really talkative.

"Yeah, I've felt it too. A question, Zabini: unclaimed? What is it?"

"It's when your godly parent hasn't claimed you yet. Once it is done, you are assigned to his cabin and you are officially his or her son." He answers quietly.

It reminds Draco of the birds flying dangerously around his old home. The hours spent watching them from the window of his bedroom.

Ravens.

"Don't you know who he is? Your parent?"

Blaise freezes but it's delicate. There are just in front of the strawberry field. The sweet smell of the juicy fruit comes to Draco and he closes his eyes. He breathes. He's alive and safe and powerful and no one will take it from him because he is – A burst of laughter interrupts his meditation.

In the fields, two girls are sitting between the young plants. Shiny hairs, polished nails and nice dresses.

They turn their heads to him.

Deadly glares.

"I have my idea" affirms slowly Zabini before greeting his friends. "Malfoy, this is Daphne Greengrass and Pansy Parkinson. Hope you'll find your place among us."

It's never easier.

It will never be.

 **iii. i never have time**

Finally, the gods claim their children one night. It's all sparks and gasps and surprises.

Good or bad.

Draco is the son of a goddess. It makes his world collapse and break and shakes. His whole body is shaking below the sign of the red balance.

He wants to scream, he wants explanation from this mother who was not his. He wants to know who is Narcissa Malfoy (certainly not a mom. A mask, a shadow. A liar.)

All the lies pill up on his head, threatening to bury him under their suffocating weight.

Blaise is the son of death, Hades like they call him. Draco doesn't shiver like the rest of them do.

Hermione Granger is the daughter of Athena, wise as hell, like a skinny freckled tall boy named Ron Weasley.

The other boy, the one with the emerald boy and the thunder in the voice, Harry Potter the legend, is the son of Zeus and it surprises no one.

Draco is good with learning, memorizing. He knows hierarchy. He knows who has power down here and who would do crazy things to earn it.

He aligns his behavior with those who could help him. He moves in Nemesis's cabin, meet a strange boy, Theodore Nott.

"Hello, brother."

It sounds fake, it sounds swallow.

"We're not related Nott."

"You're wrong, kiddo. Except maybe for the blond platinum hair. We can't at least be sure that we have not the same dad."

Draco Malfoy is secretive so it's not like he was going to share his family tree with his stranger came from nowhere, occupying a bed in front of his own, with a space clearly untidy. The floor is covered up by clothes, gum papers and a sword –

A sword.

Draco learns two things about Theodore Nott: one, his not a big fan of cleaning up, two, he's dangerous and maybe psycho.

He buries his head in his pillow but it's not an efficient barrier to shield him against Nott's dark laugh.

He sleeps like a rock in spite of his new situation, not knowing who he is, what he is, nor why he is like this but –

Draco Malfoy has listened to Remus when he was describing heroes,

He wants blood and revenge thus he needs a weapon – He sleeps but it's never simple to dream.

Hermione Granger, on the other side, is as happy as she can be about this new place she can call home. The blood boiling in her veins, mix of red hemoglobin and golden ichor, she will own it. She has plenty of brother and sisters who likes to play chess (like this redhead with a stomach barely larger than his light. He smells like sun and he looks like a knight.) or reads books or learns or being ferocious and vivacious and wise and –

After months of fighting and searching and struggling for a safe place, she is there. She has a clean bed, stimulating conversations, answers. No goals.

The older ones are the most complicated to deal with because they already have done everything that she could have thought doing. She has no use, no purpose. She is just a little girl, head up to heroes.

She is not even the smarter one anymore. It bugs her but, when night comes, she doesn't cry. She is focused: she planned her next more, a step ahead in the conquest of this new playground.

She hears about prophecy and quests. Since this day, there is no second without this goal seeded in her mind. This is why she's born. She is mean to be a hero. A salvation.

(Here it is. Heroes are born again under the benevolent smile of the moon and the quiet whispers of gods and titans in their dreams. It's a whistle of rage and foaming blood but they are just children training with weapons bigger than them, so they just hear opportunities, future, and treasure. Whatever they are.)

They have no time for each other. Draco looks at her when she is not aware, her bright eyes when she discovers more and more about Greek gods, about this language who was like an odd gut for her until she finds the camp. She is a brilliant strategist; her blade is as sharpened as her mind but she makes him feels something very wrong. Something very primal for someone who is called Draco Malfoy and has been raised in lies and marble.

It's not love. It's fear.

She has crawled in the mud, she has blown up the cage of her own childhood to become who she is. There are rumors about her, about how she has reached this heaven after a journey into hell, blood splashed all over her face, and a broken arm.

She does not give up. Never. She has something to prove and Draco – he's not really a curious kid, just a coward – doesn't want to have anything to do with it.

He has a weapon now, and he surrounded by powerful and determinate people who will support him (to the end of the world.)

He's just scared that she will cause him trouble. That she will try to stop him, to fight him, to be competitive.

When he looks at her, her eyes twitching with concentration, the sides of her nose quivering when she succeeds to master a new type of weapons (she's good with spears. It's like a wand, like an extension of her own arm come to life.), he's afraid that she will win.

They grow up and grow up like trees do. They dig their nutriments and values and resources out this godly soil. They are two vigorous trees but theirs branches never touch.

They have no time, they have to reach the sky.

 **iv. i know you're dying to meet me**

Hermione asks for a quest to Remus on her seventeenth birthday.

He says yes but his face is ravaged by old scars, making creases in his textured skin. He is so old but he is also kind. She has seen the monsters out there, he has too and he trains heroes every day because it is the reason he has for waking up every morning.

But he has hope. No matter the blood on their hands or the monster's body lying out there, lifeless, he has hope.

Hermione is looking for hope in this quest.

Remus talks about the necessity to have companions. She said yes, she's a little distracted, a little ambitious. She does not care about beginnings and new roots, she's only here for the end.

She goes for the quest. She's sure it will lead her to answers.

She is not frightened by the smell of the oracle nor by her patchouli-infused threats. It's an old skeleton with vintage pearl necklace and bracelets, colorful scarfs and too much dust everywhere.

It's not a danger. Hermione Granger knows the face of danger when she sees it and it's not in the once-human features of Sibyl Trelawney.

Draco Malfoy, Blaise Zabini and Harry Potter follow her on the forbidden land. They follow her on the burnt land, where the gods are no longer listening.

They destroy a city while trying to save it from the monsters. Hermione is wise but she cannot find a way to stop this building to fall on this young lady, pink stiletto and bright smile, top bun. The mortal is collapsed under the ruins.

Hermione freezes and watches it. There is blood on the corpse's clothes.

She wonders if the gods saw it. She wonders if it is Malfoy's fault.

Because, apparently, it is always his fault in this quest. It is his fault if the gods are angry (and if Nemesis is angrier.)

It is his fault if Blaise has raised an army of skeletons to save them from worse than death and bones.

It is his fault if she is still bleeding. (he has not learned how to patch wounds and he's not even good to comfort her.)

It is always his fault because the quest, it was not hers. It was his. They needed to negotiate something from Nemesis, something precious. A scale. To reestablish the order of the world or something like that. It was perfect, it was all bruises and burns and challenges. It was a success.

Until Malfoy made mommy angry and –

This boy had some serious self-control issues and parental ones and she's angrier that she looks out after him because –

Now, there is a minor goodness hunting them and cursing them and throwing hell on them.

The griffins with their wings and their claws are ripping their bare skins.

While they are running (sweat covers Blaise's face and Harry throws lightning bolt everywhere around them. It's dark. Except the neon signs of obscure and greasy fast-foods the only thing she can see between the flashes is blood. So much blood.)

The wounds on her chest is infected. It's not ichor, it's sticky blood and yellowish pus. She keeps her mouth shut and she takes a sip of ambrosia, just a tiny sip – it tastes like home and toothpaste and mint – because they are in a worst situation.

So much worse.

Malfoy crawls to her on his elbows. His face is covered in dust, and his lips is tinted with carmine blood.

"I'm sorry Granger. I didn't want this to – "

"No, you're not." She answers. Her tongue is sharp and her patience nonexistent. "You're a coward, Malfoy. You are her son and you wanted revenge. You got it, champion."

He stays silent for a while. Harry and Blaise are nowhere close to be found. Even going to supermarket is a threatening ride yet they are clearly seizing opportunity rather than staying between the two of them. The walking chaos and the bitter warrior.

It was her quest. It was supposed to be her last trial.

He kisses her, this night. She bites him but he doesn't taste the difference. He's already bloody.

She kisses her back and her lips (god, her lips.)

It's unreal.

 **v. baby, as soon as you meet me (you'll wish that you never did)**

It is, in fact.

She bursts in laughter, it's not her laugh. She kisses him but it is not how he has ever imagined (not that he has)

Either she is far more anger than he could thought either she's not herself. Without breaking the contact between them (he feels her lashes flushing against his skin, her heartbeat, the dryness of her lips) he takes out his dagger of his belt. He's Narcissa's son and she has at least taught him that she loved him even if he did not love himself.

His life is precious and there is no way he dies kissing a ferocious girl.

He approaches the blade to the back of her neck, where the flesh is tender, where her hair begins to grow, she keeps kissing him and that's when he knows –

"Hermione Granger is hyper-aware of everything that threatens her life and curiously, even more when it's me."

He stabs the thing in the back without a blink. It still has her face, her dirty stains of mud or blood on the cheek and her light in the eyes.

He watches it fade slowly into a glassy last look.

(he has never dreamt about her dying, about killing her)

There is no blood on his own hands, just gold. Rivers of it, flowing on his palms.

Then he hears a scream.

She is – Hermione Granger, the true one – behind him. She looks terrified and he can easily imagine why. He drops the bloody weapon and open his mouth to explain himself but she doesn't let him the time.

She's better than him at reunions.

She punches a goddess – his mother, actually – in the face and she shouts at him

"Don't you dare kill me again in the back! You, coward!" she turns her head to her opponent, wings growing out of her white dress, black eyes like divine revenge and ichor dropping from her nose. "And you…" she yells at Nemesis "Don't you dare to toy with him again! You, pathetic mother!"

He's amazed. As are Potter and Blaise, gasping, almost dropping their grocery bags. These guys have a great timing, truly.

"What's happening?"

"I've killed Granger and now she tries to make us more in danger than we used to be. Quite a routine."

"Nice" comments Blaise laconically.

It was nice indeed.

x.

The fact is that Nemesis has met his father, a powerful and resentful man, in February. Coldest month to meet a sharp woman, a deadly goddess.

9 months later, he was married. 9 months later, he was in jail for fraud letting behind him a spouse, a huge manor with peacocks and hedges high like ramparts. And a baby.

Narcissa Malfoy called him Draco because his father was a snake and his mother a dragon, but she loved him anyway.

The fact is that Nemesis does not like competition. She only lives for justice. And she's not the best mother, just the second one.

x.

She swears to let them in peace. She doesn't look at Draco in the eyes but she gives him the scale without a word.

The goddess disappears and everything returns to normal: Blaise and his charming smile, Harry, his broken glasses and his messy hair. Everything except Draco.

She goes to sleep, he takes the first turn of guard (just in case.) and the next morning, she finds him sleeping against the grey wall of cement.

She shakes his shoulder a bit too strong and she makes his name turns to cold then to nothing in her mouth.

He rises on his feet, quickly. He hasn't wash the ichor on his shirt or his hands, he has golden blood stuck on his face and on his hair.

She doesn't swipe it. She shakes his hand instead.

"It's over, Malfoy. The quest is finished. Our collaboration is over."

"Granger – "

She walks away and she lets the steam of the public shower chase the image of his hand frozen in the space, like if he was holding on the ghost of her own.

She has only five minutes of peace before Blaise knocks on the door to announces the departure.

The journey back is long and quiet. They slide monsters in silence. Harry and Blaise fill the void with their incessant chatting but in the end, it's just an annoying background noise and she just wish she had a book to avoid to stare at Malfoy's glacial mouthline.

The camp is just as they've left it. Same sickening-sugar strawberry smell. Same orange cotton shirt. Same problems and same wars between cabins. Same books on the shelves in front of her bed, same sticky-gloss written messages on the door of the Aphrodite's.

And Draco Malfoy is more an empty body than a heroic soul.

But she can deal with it. She can deal with the shush and the gossips and the praises, she can deal with new ranks and admiration glowing in the eyes of new campers.

He shows up on her porch, one morning.

"Granger, I think we need to talk."

"Malfoy, I think we do not."

"You died."

Oh –

She looks at him, with his platinum hair and his angular face, edges like a broken mirror reflecting long evenings of memories and nightmares of feathers, claws, and falling buildings.

She cannot breathe.

Oh –

She has tried so hard to remember. To fill the blank space. To put herself in this thing's place, to imagine her heart slow down and her erratic need for air, for help. She has tried so hard.

Sometimes, she forgets that she is not the one who is dead, and neither the one who kissed him.

Oh –

He waits. His leg twitches. But she cannot move and she cannot take back her words because it's over and he has stabbed her in the back, he has kissed her, he has killed her. But she can't remember because it was not her and it was her and she's not sure that he's doing a difference and he's on her porch –

Sometimes, she wants to be the one who kissed him, a night in an abandoned bungalow.

Oh –

He jumps a flight of steps, she grabs him by the collar.

"I don't like you Malfoy. You're not wise enough to be on my side in war."

"I know. But I'm sure that you don't want me on the opposing side now that are know what your weak points are."

"Do you?" she asks, the reminiscence of the dagger precisely driven between her two blades floating between them.

Her chest hurts when she bends over him to grab his chin.

She kisses him, he tastes like ambrosia and end of the world and regrets.

But his skin is clean and the sun warms their intertwined bodies.

It's enough for now. Maybe one day, he will be brave enough to forgive to Narcissa, his father and Nemesis.

Maybe one day, she will be soft enough to come back home, to make an appointment at the dentist.

For now, they are just demi-gods, scared of what they have done, searching for expiation.


End file.
